Dead or Alive 5: Last Round Reviews
Dead or Alive 5: Last Round amounts to the definitive version of a game released back in 2012, which is both a good and a bad thing.
Dead or Alive 5: Last Round gives Steam users a new and complex fighting game to add to their libraries, but the abysmal online play limits the fun and lasting appeal.
Without online multiplayer, all the stages and possessing visuals that are inferior to the console versions, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round manages that rare and horrible thing of making PC players feel like second-class citizens to their console brethren and in doing so, succeeds in heavily tarnishing what is actually a pretty incredible fighting game in the process.
When all is said and done, DOA 5 ends up being a great looking, middle of the road fighter that still heavily relies on absurd female characters in revealing outfits to sell copies.
Dead or Alive: Last Round doesn't have the contortionist special moves required to master its Street Fighter rival, making this the more immediately accessible game by some margin. But neither does it have the mascots of Capcom's stable (it's telling, perhaps, that the most recognisable characters here are borrowed from Ninja Gaiden and Virtua Fighter). But at its deeper levels, it's an equally engaging and challenging proposition as its rivals, a quick tempo test of dexterity and reaction that, at its best, transcends the mildly grotty aspects for which it is best known.
Solid, if far from revolutionary, and well past its used-by date in terms of its treatment of women.